DE Oracle @ UMUC

Why WebTycho Remains Instrumental in the Web 2.0 World

Jennifer Thies

Senior Instructional Support Specialist

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: May-June 2008

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Emerging-technologies

Emerging Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way people use the Internet. These technologies use the network or Web as the platform and allow and encourage user feedback, interaction, and participation. For a more complete description of Web 2.0, please read What is Web 2.0 by Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, a computer book publishing firm.

Web 2.0 tools can be excellent for creating communities beyond a single class for an entire program orprospective students. They are fairly easy to use, and through the availability of permalinks, content is reusable and easily updated. Using wikis, blogs, photo sharing, and social bookmarking or writing can enhance your classroom, if made relevant to the topic at hand. However, it is important to keep in mind the use and record keeping nature of the WebTycho classroom when implementing Web 2.0 technologies.

In practice, it is always a good idea that graded work be kept and recorded in the WebTycho classroom to capture the work level at that time for grading and archiving. UMUC has control over WebTycho, including the backups and archives created for classes. Students who create their own accounts for blogging, social writing and bookmarking, and other Web 2.0 features maintain control over those activities and will likely continue using the accounts beyond the dates of the class. WebTycho can capture their work during the time they were in the class; this captured information can be appealed to later if questions or concerns arise regarding class work.

While blogs include the ability to comment on an entry, the comments sections do not lend themselves well to threaded discussions. Comments help the writer and readers feel instantly connected to the issue discussed and give immediate feedback on a topic. However, for an entire class discussion on a topic, the WebTycho conference area is much more suitable. WebTycho portfolios record each person’s participation in every discussion in the classroom in one concise area. Because there isn’t an easy way to create a record of all comments left behind in various blogs, WebTycho conferences are the better tool for graded discussion participation.

Tools such as del.icio.us and ma.gnolia.com can help a teacher or student collect and categorize links to valuable resources on the Web. By using tags to organize collected links, useful pages are easier to find and previously undiscovered resources can be stumbled upon. However, the Webliography area of the WebTycho classroom not only allows students to contribute links to these useful sites but also allows the faculty member to make edits. The faculty member can also import valuable links from the Webliography of one class to another for continued use.

Current tools exist to aid in social writing, such as GoogleDocs or Zoho . These services can assist students with online collaboration, consistent formatting, and tracking and saving changes. However, as these documents remain in their areas external to WebTycho, they are continually editable. Faculty should direct students to save a final draft in whichever format is preferable and to submit the final document in either the Study Group or Gradebook in WebTycho. Placing the final document in WebTycho allows for a date stamp and saves a static copy of the document for that time in the class, while still allowing the document to continue being adapted later on outside of WebTycho and the class.

In distance education, students, faculty, and administrators no longer see each other weekly to subconsciously keep track of each other. By keeping the core activities and graded work within the WebTycho classroom, there are electronic footprints of participation and commentary that are backed up and archived within the classroom. These footprints help other faculty members or teaching assistants take lead of the class in case the main instructor has a health or personal emergency that prevents him or her from teaching—and they can also aid the university in the event of a grade appeal.

Faculty are encouraged to experiment with new Web 2.0 technologies, especially if they are relevant to the topic being studied. Beyond the classes that obviously study technologies, several of these new endeavors can be utilized to academic benefit. Regular blogging can help students improve their writing through regular practice if they wish to. Social bookmarking can help students and faculty network to find and record links to more topic-relevant sites or articles online. Wikis can help a community of students and/or faculty create an interlinked body of knowledge collaboratively. If you are thinking of implementing any of these tools into your course, check with your academic administrator for suitability. CSI team members are available for consultation on the use of some of these tools if you have questions or concerns.

NOTE: This article mentions only a few examples of Web 2.0 technologies. These references should not be taken as an endorsement of any particular tool, technology, or company. For a more complete list of Web 2.0 technologies, please visit the Web2 List web site.